The present disclosure relates generally to knife holders. In particular, knife holders in the form of knife mounts for releasably securing a knife to a firearm are described.
Knives have a broad range of uses for a wide variety of people, including soldiers, policemen, hunters, and the self-defense minded. Often, someone utilizing a knife will also have occasion to utilize a firearm and will need to carry both. For example, soldiers often carry a knife and a firearm while on patrol or other mission, a hunter will typically carry both a firearm and a knife into the field while hunting, and a person in a self-defense situation will generally prefer to have a firearm and a knife available to utilize as warranted by the circumstances.
A knife may serve as both weapon and tool and may come in many different shapes, sizes, and configurations. Popular knives include folding knives, out-the-front (OTF) knives, and fixed blade knives. For knives with moveable blades, some knives include features to mechanically assist moving the blade while other knives are designed for the user move the blade manually without mechanical assistance.
A knife mount is a form of knife holder that serves to hold a knife when the knife is not in use. Conventional knife holders generally take the form of sheaths, holsters, scabbards, and bayonet mounts. However, known knife holders are not entirely satisfactory for the range of applications in which they are employed.
For example, existing knife holders must be carried by hand, secured to a user's person, such as to a user's belt or tactical vest, stowed in a pocket or bag, or fixed to the front of a firearm to serve as a bayonet. Disadvantages of known knife holders include limiting a user's mobility, being awkward or fatiguing, being uncomfortable, and being prone to being misplaced. Perhaps most importantly, conventional knife holders can make the time necessary to access the knife for self-defense purposes dangerously and unacceptably long.
Carrying a knife holder occupies a user's hand and limits his ability to perform other tasks. Setting down a knife holder to free up a user's hand creates an opportunity to misplace or forget to retrieve the knife holder. Quite simply, needing to carry a knife holder by hand is inconvenient.
Securing a knife holder to a user's person, such as to a user's ankle, arm, belt, tactical vest, or helmet may be better than carrying it by hand, but is less than ideal in many contexts. For example, a knife holder secured to a user's person can be awkward, uncomfortable, and fatiguing and can limit the user's mobility. In situations where the knife is needed for self-defense, knife holders secured to user's person can increase the time necessary to access the knife and put the person in danger of bodily harm or death.
A knife secured to the front of a firearm as a bayonet presents its own challenges and limitations. For example, a knife mounted to extend beyond the muzzle as a bayonet increases the length of the firearm, which can make the firearm awkward to move in tight quarters. Further, a knife blade extending beyond the front of a gun creates a risk of injury to the user and those around her. A knife mounted as a bayonet also does not provide any benefits for holding or manipulating the firearm. Of significant concern, accessing a knife mounted as a bayonet to use independent of the firearm is unacceptably and dangerously slow.
Thus, there exists a need for knife holders that improve upon and advance the design of known holders. Examples of new and useful knife mounts relevant to the needs existing in the field are discussed below.